BBC – BECG

June 8, 2021June 8, 2021

BBC P5 Generator NGF728

We are delighted to announce that we have bought a former BBC mobile generator vehicle at auction. It came up at the CVA Doncaster commercial vehicle and plant online auction on 20 October 2020. The auctioneer contacted us because of Ruth Slavid’s article in Commercial Motor. We are grateful for assistance from Mark Forrester and his company, Euromunicipal, who are regular customers of CVA and bid on our behalf. At very short notice we managed to secure enough funding, but with a struggle and only just.

Advertisement in Commercial Motor magazine.

May 21, 2021May 21, 2021

Protected: Vivat!

April 20, 2021April 20, 2021

A Rural Surprise

By Helen Casey.

Helen Casey, the widow of BECG friend Terry Casey, originally wrote this article for the National Transport Trust magazine Transport Digest.

February 28, 2021April 20, 2021

Long Live Vivat!

Long live Vivat! – Jeffrey Borinsky and Paul Marshall

When we wrote about some of our outside broadcast (OB) trucks in the Winter 2019 Bulletin, we said a little about Vivat, our oldest truck, but this fascinating project deserves a closer look. It is a re-creation, as near as is technically possible, of an OB truck that was used at the Queen’s coronation on 2 June 1953.

February 11, 2021February 11, 2021

Early Location Drama in Colour

By Dan Cranefield, Senior Engineering Manager, BBC Tel OBs.

Survivors-on-location — “Survivors” on location.
Photo: Dan Cranefield.

Dan Cranefield looks into the beginnings of location drama shot on videotape instead of film.

January 8, 2021January 8, 2021

Roving Eye article updated again

Richard’s Roving Eye article continues to evolve, with more history appearing!

Updates include:

REII photographs at Fairoaks Airfield, Chobham for a stunt flying programme from Brian Balshaw.
REII photographs from Pat Jessup.
NYN 286Y is transferred to Pebble Mill, for Top Gear.
Some re-arrangement of the sections to improve the time-lines.
More on the proposed CRE rebuild.

December 14, 2020February 11, 2021

My “Palace of Arts” Days

By Dan Cranefield, Senior Engineering Manager, BBC Tel OBs

BBC-Palace-of-Arts-Wembley — The Palace of Arts, Wembley during the 1948 Olympics.
Photo: BBC Archive via web.archive.org.

After the war BBC Television Outside Broadcasts (Tel OBs) operated from their base at the Palace of Arts in Wembley, one of the substantial buildings which were built there specially for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924. Some of these buildings were put to other uses later on.

November 26, 2020November 26, 2020

Roving Eye article updated

Richard’s article about The BBC Roving Eye vehicles has been updated again, as more information is being brought to our attention!

The latest update includes some colour pictures of REII at Churchill’s funeral and some new pictures of NYN 286Y.

November 12, 2020June 8, 2021

BBC Power Generators article

There were only ever ten of these as eventually the BBC simply hired generators from outside organisations.

Richard’s article relates everything that he could discover about each of the ten.

You can read this article here: BBC Power Generators.

RXX905-P4 — Is this really a BBC Generator van? Photo: Dave Hill

November 10, 2020June 13, 2021

BBC Power Generators

By Richard Harris. Updated 2021-02-27.

All outside broadcast (OB) units need electric power but supplying it lacks the interest of the OB trucks themselves. At BECG our thoughts turned to this vital subject with our acquisition of a 1953 BBC generator truck. In this article, we survey the various ways in which power was provided for BBC OB trucks and look in particular at the 10 generator trucks that the BBC operated.